Okay, reality check time here. The making of the Striped Bass into gamefish status is a bad move but before you go hopping around the room and cursing at your computer hear me out. I have been catching Striped Bass since I was 6 years old, I caught my first one at the end of the Scusset Jetty fishing with my Dad and brothers, I am 48 years old now. Most of you know me from the articles, column in On The Water and talks I do now and then on my favorite subject, the Striped Bass.
I put myself through school by commercially fishing for Striped Bass when it was seen as an honorable profession. I along with just about everyone else who fished in the late seventies and early eighties sold most of what we caught. It was a case of economics, ie; being on the verge of financial ruin most of the time, paying for school then being engaged and then newly married with a new home etc., it was a lot to pay for.
I sold my last fish in the fall of 86'. I stopped because I didn't need the extra money anymore and most of all because I had and have friends that are true commercial fishermen, meaning they do it all year 'round. Now these guys over the last ten years have taken a beating. They fish day boats. Twenty footers that go out when conditions permit and what with limits on cod and the like they can barely eak out a living. The one thing they have in common is that they do it because they love the work. They are not office types or warehouse types and any kind of onshore work just doesn't suit thier personalities. They didn't rape the oceans like the bigger draggers and such. They were lucky to do a thousand pounds in several days let alone in one half way decent haul.
My point is this. The letting out of licenses to people that have jobs onshore already and make $38.00 an hour fitting pipes or selling cars etc.is wrong. If your going to sell Bass then you should make your entire living from commercial fishing, year round.
I have said this a thousand times but how would you like it if somone showed up at your job, pulled up alongside and said to you that from now on for the next 8 weeks or so he is going to get a share of your salary? That's what is going on with anyone getting a license for selling bass as of this moment. Not fair.
I fish the beach and from my skiff 4 or 5 times a week. The number of recreational anglers seeking Bass has tripled in the last five years or so. The amount of fish they take home is enormous compared to the commercial catch. Sure we know how much the commercials take. They have to report it to the state and the state publish's those figures. Recs don't but if they did it would open alot of eyes.
Right now making it a gamefish and the efforts of SBF is a blatant attempt to skewer the view of the general public to thier one sided view. It is the cause of many without the benefit of the experience of the many years it takes to truly know the bass and the history of the fishery. I have seen bad times. In '82 I fished the canal religiously all season, night tides and day tides with some of the best bass fishermen the canal has ever seen and I caught two (2) all season form beginning to end. The cause of the decline to that level wasn't overfishing, it was the careless plundering of the eco system that supports the larval striped bass. DDT use in tobacco fields along the shores of the Chesapeake, pollution in the Hudson and acid rain. Not overfishing.
The striper is a fish with tremendous fecundity. Given the right conditions it spawns millions of fry. That should be the aim of SBF. To protect the environment that nutures the healthy re-production of the Striped Bass. To see that restrictions on the netting of forage fish that the Bass need to have when they reach the larger sizes is made into law. To restore the once abundant stocks of fish like Menhaden, Mullet and Herring.
Protect those resources and the bass will take care of themselves. Add to this a 36" limit for commercial and recreational fishermen alike at that size limit the law for the entire range of the Striped Bass. The Bass is an interstate traveller and belongs not to one state only and should be regulated as such. Not 18' here, 28' there, that's stupid management. And, lastly, again, make it legal for only the true commercial fisherman to harvest the Striped Bass, not weekend warriors and vacationing plumbers and office workers.
Just my two cents, thanks for listening.
|